old and slow

[mrazey]

Okay, a question about old, outdated hardware.

My father has an old PII box, for email and internet. Works good for him, the price was right.....

Currenty it has a Riva video card with less than 10 mbs of memory (?)...

Question, does adding a newer 64 mb PCI card offer any performance gain...for things like the internet, or is there any drawback...as they are very affordable, 30-40 bucks, it seems like it would be a cheap upgrade.....

PII, 512 mb RAM......

MR

 

[Crashman]

Does he really need better video? I've had boards with onboard Riva 128 video that seemed fine, even with only 8MB of RAM.

<font color=blue>Only a place as big as the internet could be home to a hero as big as Crashman!</font color=blue>
<font color=red>Only a place as big as the internet could be home to an ego as large as Crashman's!</font color=red>

 

[mrazey]

This probably should have been in video cards....I quess I am trying to understand the relationship between the CPU and the video card....does the video card add to or enhance the machines ability to handle routine video chores, such as display and all the flash type animations that are so common on the internet?

I understand that a video card is madatory to run complex games that use special GPU engine type gizmos....but do they also help with the basic chores of web wondering and digital picture developing?

Thanks for your help and input

MR

 

[Crashman]

Flash, WMV, etc, are probably relying on the CPU completely. The PII should be pleanty fast for anything you do on the internet.

Digital Pictures are easy to display, especially those under the size of the video RAM. I'd also set the AGP Aperture to 128MB in BIOS.

<font color=blue>Only a place as big as the internet could be home to a hero as big as Crashman!</font color=blue>
<font color=red>Only a place as big as the internet could be home to an ego as large as Crashman's!</font color=red>